Countdown to release: a little bit different than the other detectives.

I promised to get into why I decided to do a Latino detective. Here's the thing. The detective fiction writers contemporary to this story were white men and their detectives were white men. There's nothing wrong with white men-- if I didn't enjoy reading about Archie Goodwin, Phillip Marlowe, Nick Charles, and even The Shadow, I don't think I'd be writing this kind of story myself.

But white guys are only part of the population. Oh, the writers were often aware of that. Rex Stout's politics sometimes entered his stories, with Nero Wolfe getting quite irate over the disrespect blacks face in America. I think Stout cared about women's opportunities, too, and he found at times stifled by giving both Wolfe and Goodwin some sexist traits, having to write around it with women executives and intelligence agents stealing the spotlight now and then. And Stout loved using Wolfe's status as an immigrant as a reason to do stories involving the complications that could cause for less successful people. Maxwell Grant uses the larger cast of The Shadow novels to introduce characters who defy demographic stereotypes, and sometimes upturns a whole slew of slanders at a time, as with the Roma in "The Gypsy Curse".

So it's not like the genre didn't have writers trying to expand their reader's minds. Justice, including social justice, is one of the things that is so appealing about the mystery genre. Still, history is a big canvas to paint on, and oddly enough, it's still painted mostly in white. Setting books in the past, and creating a more diverse cast that would have been written in similar books, gives me a chance to explore aspects of American life that were often ignored.

As a Latino, Rafael doesn't face the level of exclusion that black people often did, but he's still got to work around the fact that people see him as different. Sometimes with works to get him in better with people who might normally be suspicious of a detective. Sometimes he's been stalled by people who don't see him as "our kind". Facing obstacles himself probably makes him more aware of how women were blocked back then, as well. All in all, he's in a good position to observe inclusion and exclusion, and I can bring up points without getting heavy-handed about it.

Besides, I'm only scratching the surface in the first book, and the political perspective isn't the whole of it. Eventually, his Mayan heritage is going to be very plot-relevant. See, the other reason it's cool to give him some non-European heritage is that every group has its own folklore, traditions, and monsters. While the first book deals with one of the most used of magical creatures, there will be less common ones as the series progresses.

Countdown to release: These are a Few of my Favorite Things.

I mention in the acknowledgments that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. But the names I list might not be familiar to everyone.

Raymond Chandler was the creator of Phillip Marlowe. He didn't create the hard-boiled detective genre, but he saw untapped potential in it. He started writing his own, bringing in a more sophisticated style of writing. He believed that people could enjoy exciting plot twists and still get literary touches.

Dan Curtis was a television producer, but not just a producer. He came up with and developed ideas for shows. His first foray into fiction was based on a dream that a friend told him sounded like gothic horror. He'd never heard of that genre before, plunged into it, and came out with a successful gothic soap opera that saved a television network. One of his followup projects, Kolchak, the Nightstalker, features a classically abrasive investigative reporter who keeps finding paranormal dangers at the heart of strange events in Chicago. It was brilliant and funny, and I was delighted to be compared to it.

Marv Wolfman might seem like the most obscure name I gave, but he's been a tremendous influence on comic books and has wrtiten television shows. One of his specialties is re-imagining classic monsters into contemporary stories. He's also remarkable for working out how to fix inconsistencies in an ongoing story line..

I'd also like to say Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books helped me see there is a market for this kind of old-fashioned character and cross-genre writing. Unlike the Dresden books, this is actually set back in the heyday of the private eye's he emulates. And my detective, rather than starting out as an expert on the occult, begins blissfully unaware.

Less directly, I'm sure Terry Pratchett has been an influence, if only because he's my favorite writer and I've read the Watch books over and over.

And... Star Wars. No, really. Watching The Force Awakens, I thought, "This guy doing Poe Dameron would be good as one of those smart-alec detectives." And the idea of doing a Latino detective in period was intriguing. I'll get into that in my next post.

Countdown to release: Film Noir?

Can a book be film noir? Well, given that "film" is in the genre title, I'd say not.

But, there are many film noir movies that are based on books.The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, for instance, came from novels by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler respectively. Thus, it may be useful to categorize a book style as film noir. There are many kinds of detective stories: police procedural, cozies, analytical, and forensic, to name a few approaches. Film noir gives you an idea of what to expect.

Some of the defining aspects of the film noir cinematic style are visual-- tilted camera angles and dramatic lighting. That isn't readily captured in a novel... but it helped me choose my author photo.

One of the absolute requirements of film noir is sexual tension. I've kept that in mind while writing these. Many characters are attractive and there are complications in their interactions with each other that keep it interesting. First person narration means that, although the protagonist is himself a very attractive man, the descriptions focus more on the female characters.

Of course, film noir also dwells on the darker side of social behavior. Usually, it has to do with crime. Not all film noir stories are mysteries. Some are capers; some are escapes; some are thrillers. But at heart, there's generally a legal line being crossed or contemplated. Rafael has plenty of that to deal with, mostly from others, although he has to skirt the line himself in a few ways.

Finally, while this is not genre defining (film noir movies have been made since), the bulk of film noir movies were made from 1944-1954 in AMerica. Forever's Too Long is set in 1947, in New York City, so describing it as film noir (or just noir), helps imply the setting.

Film noir movies have an air of fatalism, pessimism and menace, though, and... The Forever Detective moves in and out of that. Rafael faces a heavy menace. There are hints that he's following a fate he knows nothing about, but others do. More will be explored about that in the sequels. As for pessimism, Rafael is torn between hope and fear. However, action helps him keep his focus emotionally and his warm personality and sense of humor contrast with the noir aspects.

So.... noir light? A dance/action number in shades of grey? Read it and decide.

Dedicated to those who remember

When I write about the not-too-distant past, I’m writing about someone’s lifetime. Part of my interest in jazz and pulp detective stories come from my parents. My father, in particular, loved music, and had a large collection of jazz and classical pieces that were part of the background of life. Mind you, the post-swing era of crooner and do-wop were more part of his personal timeline, but every generation picks up things from the generation before.

Detective stories have never really gone out of style. My parents had a large collection, and the local library had plenty as well. While many wonderful stories are being told in present day, the works of Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, and others, will always have a place on a well-stocked shelf. Although some people may be put off by out of date social mores, a discerning reader will see some of the writers were pushing against prejudices few people talked about at the time. It also grounds the modern writer who wants to write about times past. Kerry Greenwood, the author of the Miss Fisher mysteries, does a wonderful job connecting with issues of the past that are relevant today. In a sense, one can ‘remember’ things by proxy.

The classic movies, often in black-and-white, played as filler on TV in much of my childhood, although they were preserving a time I never lived through. But the vivid emotion of the acting and high suspense of the stories drew me in and made me feel as though I were there. While some parts of Forever’s Too Long draw on more recent sources, the pop culture of the time is referenced in many ways.

But would it ring true to someone who had been there in person? I may never learn. The generation of my grandparents and their siblings is disappearing. I lost my great-aunt recently, and while I mostly thought back to happy memories of her, and what a swell woman she was (Eugene’s friendship with Rafael may have been subconsciously influenced slightly by having a very successful relative who never treated anyone different due to economic status), I also thought, I wish that my book had come out in time for her to read it.

Here’s to the ‘Greatest Generation” and the ones before and after, that expanded the American middle class, started a sense of multiculturalism (what else can one consider jazz to be?), adapted wonderfully to changes in technology and social structures, and shaped systems that improved world peace. Thanks for the memories.

Writing in a different time period.

The internet makes doing basic research so much easier for many things.

I was going to use the phrase "coloring inside the lines" and then had to ask myself-- would a guy in his 30's in the 40's use that phrase? When were coloring books invented? They seem like something that's just been around forever. Well, it only took about a minute to do the research to find out they'd been around about 100 years by then, so yes, it was fine to use.

Likewise, I needed to see if a fire-axe back then fit my mental image of one... even though I don't describe it in detail, there was a possibility I would use it on the cover. Another question I had was if a passport problem would legitimately be used to delay someone leaving the country.

Back before the internet, I'd have needed to look for very, very specific history books for images of fire axes, an encyclopedia for the coloring book history, and as for the passport issue, I'd probably need to look into procedural handbooks from the New York-New Jersey Port Authority from 1948. Finding those sources would all have been difficult.

There's something wonderful about having so much information at our fingertips.